From the WSJ Opinion Archives
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Don't Call It Christmas
Secularist fanatics try to take "holy" out of the holidays.
If you like your Christmases straight--i.e., "Merry Christmas" instead of "Season's Greetings"--the run-up to Dec. 25 can be a trying time. And this year the grinches are again out in full force, trying their best to strip from our public squares any hint of what most Americans will actually be celebrating come Christmas morn.
In New York City, a judge is expected to rule any day on a public-school policy that forbids Nativity scenes while allowing Jewish menorahs and Islamic stars-and-crescents on the grounds that the last two are secular. Likewise in Palm Beach, the city is being sued by residents who have been denied permission to place a crèche on public property that already features a menorah. In the state of Washington, meanwhile, a music teacher who allowed his schoolchildren a Hanukkah song expunged the word "Christmas" in "Carol From an Irish Cabin," replacing it with the words "white winter."
Even Congress now boasts a "holiday tree" instead of a Christmas tree.
Somehow we doubt that this is what Thomas Jefferson had in mind with his wall of separation. As the Supreme Court put it in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984): "To forbid the use of this one passive symbol--the crèche--at the very time people are taking note of the season with Christmas hymns and carols in public schools and other public places, and while the Congress and legislatures open sessions with prayers by paid chaplains, would be a stilted overreaction contrary to our history and to our holdings."
Yet in fairness to city officials trying to navigate the shoals of political correctness, our high court's guidelines have not been clear and consistent. And its rulings have encouraged the idea that the only acceptable religious symbol in the public square is one stripped of its meaning.
This idea was captured perfectly by the town attorney for Palm Beach, who explains that the menorah on town property is effectively "neutralized" into a "secular display" by its placement next to a Christmas tree. Neutralized. It helps to remember that the only reason Palm Beach even allows the menorah is that the local Lubavitch Center filed a lawsuit back in 1995.
Not least of the baleful influences on our civic life is the implicit message that the way for citizens to gain their First Amendment rights on the public square is via pretense and dissembling. Last year in this space we wrote about a New Jersey town that banned a local Jewish group from erecting a menorah on public property even though it allowed a Christmas tree. With a straight face the city fathers insisted that the tree they put up each December was not a Christmas tree at all but a "tree of lights" commemorating Pearl Harbor.
As Notre Dame Law Prof. Rick Garnett notes, forcing Americans to lie about their religious symbols does as much violence to the First Amendment as any ban. "If the point of the Establishment Clause is to keep government out of the business of religion," he told us, "it's strange to have judges and city lawyers in the business of declaring what people's symbols mean."
And if you think labeling our spruces and firs "holiday trees" is the solution to the season's wars, just wait until the ACLU realizes what the dictionary already makes clear: That the word "holiday" itself comes from the Old English "holy day."
